


Pulp Fiction

by bjfic_archivist



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Canon, Points of View
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-28
Updated: 2006-10-28
Packaged: 2018-12-26 18:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12064917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjfic_archivist/pseuds/bjfic_archivist
Summary: Brian and Justin go shopping. --February 14, 2004





	Pulp Fiction

**Author's Note:**

> Note from IrishCaelan, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Brian_Justin_Fanfiction_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in September 2017. I posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Brian/Justin Fanfiction Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/bjfic/profile).

From the outside, the yellow-haired college student and the executive have nothing in common. They browse together in the used bookstore, smiling faintly, in the manner of any excessively polite stranger. Occasionally, one will bend over a find, discerning whether his newfound treasure is worth the effort to stoop and retrieve it - but mostly, their eyes scan the hastily constructed wooden racks with a speed bordering on jaded indifference.

The store itself, or one very much like it, could be found in any large, or even not-so-large, urban area. Never in the best of neighbourhoods, these shops are the refugee camps of once-loved treasures that nobody wants, but can never quite bring themselves to throw away. At different points in my memory, this particular store has been many things - a political rallying spot; a pickup joint for the painfully shy artsy type; a good place to ask if, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, anyone knew a good place to buy tomatoes. These days, the store is piled to the ceiling with castoff books, CDs by flavour of the month bands, and movies purchased by newly liberated college students, long on cash and short on responsibility. The veneer of recently-acquired respectability is thin, but meticulously shined to fit in with the trendy recent arrivals parked next door.

The clientele has changed over the years, too. Once, none but society's most persevering discards came in the store: aging hippies, the working poor, and intellectual teens fleeing the persecution of the pop-culture worshipping cliques in their schools. Over time, and with the change in the demographic of the neighbourhood, we've seen new customers of a sort we never saw before - such as the man in the grey Armani suit.

The man is browsing an eclectic selection of media - economics textbooks, back issues of High Times, the occasional CD or DVD. He ventured into the fringe-beaded 'over-21' section for a good quarter-hour, openly studying gay erotica from last week and last millennium with equal interest… occasionally chuckling or grimacing at some unknowable displeasure. He caught my gaze as he walked into the alcove, challenging me to question his actions, daring me to comment. There's no need… I've seen his kind before, that barrelling body language that can't be interpreted any other way. He is unrepentantly here, and unrepentantly queer, and I'd better get used to it. Marvellous, but his choice of reading material - faded gay porn on 70's-era newsprint - leaves a lot to be desired. From my perspective, he'd be happier if he'd just go over and peruse those Mad Magazines he's been surreptitiously eyeing from across the room.

My other customer of the day couldn't be a bigger contrast. His hair is striped in that way that kids do it these days, dirty blonde and sunny yellow lying back to back like a faded tiger's pelt. He searches so many of the sections with unfailing enthusiasm, wandering from the art history books to the coffee table pictorials to the Architecture Digests with delight and great speed. Already carrying a sketchbook when he walked through the door, he's since added two textbooks - I can pick out a textbook from a mile away - and several CD's to the load.

The student takes a step towards the over-21 section, stops, and looks longingly toward the man in the grey suit. Whether he'd like to approach him, and is afraid, or is just afraid of being seen in that section, I can't tell. When the man finds new interest in the modern fiction section, the boy seems to find his courage.

He takes a step towards the older man, slower and more tentative than he has been his entire visit, then pauses and looks toward me instead. I raise one eyebrow and glance at the sign. He sighs dejectedly. If this kid's 21, then I'm Napoleon. He turns and looks longingly at the man again.

"Go on, kid," I whisper, my voice rusty from being disused over the course of my dull, dreary morning. "I won't tell if you won't."

He smiles then, one of those radiant grins you get only from the truly happy or truly insane, and ducks quickly into the stacks. The contents are neatly arranged with bland brown-wrapped magazines on one set of shelves, clear plastic-wrapped magazines on the other, and the wall stacked very high with books of every illicit description. He touches the brown bags gently, briefly eyes the cheap magazines swathed in cheap plastic, then finally allows his gaze to ripple and wander over the books. These books are the very most forgotten of my orphaned brood, used roughly, then abandoned in shame and disgust. They are many, and varied; each defiantly bearing a cheesy come-on for a title undoubtedly intended to be heart-stopping and provocative. I follow his course through the shelves with my eyes, pausing in my own mental inventory when his head stops moving.

He looks around - left, right, back around the corner - and shakes his head gently, as if to clear it. Turning back to the shelf, he cocks his head again, not in the overtly sentimental image of the RCA Victor dog, but…as if he's intrigued by something. Like a courtesan invited to partake in an extravagant, splendorous debauchery she hadn't yet considered.

"Brian!" the kid stage-whispers, calling to Armani man in a voice meant not to distract me from the book I'm not reading. "Brian, come here!"

"Christ…" I hear the man mutter under his breath, but soon enough, he sets down his book and returns to the adult section.

The kid turns at the sound of the man's footsteps, and his smile is easily more radiant by several orders of magnitude. It's more blinding than a toothpaste commercial, but nevertheless, its effects are undeniable on the man, who cracks his first genuine smile of the morning in return.

"I was reading something," the man, Brian, grumbles benignly. "What do you want?"

The kid grins and holds up a small blue paperback. "Look, Brian! Look! It's us!"

"Justin, what the fuck are you talking about?" Brian replies, in a blandly aggravated voice that holds no concern over whether I'm reading or not. "Give me that."

Brian snatches the book from the blonde's grasp. The kid, Justin, gives up the book willingly, but follows the man's hand to point at the couple painted on the cover.

"That is US," he says triumphantly. "You can't deny it."

Brian studies the book for a moment, holds it up to the light, rotating it in such a way that I can examine the cover myself. In the image, a tall, dark and handsome type, in a lovely grey suit, is squiring a diminutive blonde in a t-shirt and jeans. The pictured boy is smiling, gazing adoringly up at his dreamy mate, who smiles down at his boy in turn. It's not a large book, and from ten feet away, I can't see much detail, but I have to admit that the figures on the front bear a striking resemblance.

Much to his own dismay, I'm sure, the man is forced to agree. "I guess." He looks at the book more discerningly, then comments, "I think this guy is more muscular than you."

"And you!" Justin retorts, seizing the book and laughing gently. "Fuck, look how old this thing is!"

He's not kidding about the age, either. The edges of the cover are frayed, the ink of the blue-edged pages worn or watered away with time and misuse. I grimace every time a book like that is picked up around here, since it seems that nobody knows how to read a book without cracking its spine anymore.

"Be careful you don't tear anything," Brian cautions as Justin gleefully starts flipping pages. "I don't want to pay for that old piece of shit."

"If you won't buy it, then I will. No way I'm leaving this behind,," Justin replies eagerly. "God, this is so weird."

"Christ, Justin! Don't buy it," Brian sighs, tending his aggravation lovingly. "You always buy shit and don't use it, or don't read it, or don't even fucking look at it again. I'm sick of your shit piling up everywhere."

"Oh, it is not," Justin snickers, obviously well-inoculated against the benign exasperation of his boyfriend. Given their behaviour this morning, the solitary silence, I would never have picked them out as acquaintances, let alone the lovers they've revealed themselves to be. Perhaps that's by design - the further apart they are, the less together they look, and you can't fault that logic in our homophobic world. Of course, there are those of us who see two people so conspicuously apart, and immediately know that they're together, but I suspect we're small enough in number to be insignificant.

Would they be happy to be so obvious? Hard to say. I can't picture the blonde being terribly unhappy about it, but the older man is another story.

"Justin, you are not buying that book, and I am not buying it for you," he huffs. "We don't need it. It's probably cheesy porn with no plot. I have enough of those already, and none of them are about to fall apart the next time I pick them up."

"But it's history!" the young man explains, examining the pages, turning them lovingly. "This is what it was like to be gay in… um…" he scampers through the book, gently shuffling his way back to the beginning. "In 1956."

"No it's not," Brian chortles, his face colouring with the pleasure of his boyfriend's excruciating innocence. "Life is never like a stroke fantasy, and that doesn't change… doesn't matter if written in 1956 or 2006, it's meant to get you off. Nothing more."

"Maybe," Justin allows. "But aren't you a little bit curious?"

"No," he replies firmly. The boy raises his eyebrows. "No!"

Those eyebrows lift a little bit higher.

"Fine. Buy the fucking book, but if it falls apart the first time you jack off, don't come crying to me."

Triumphant, Justin makes his way to me, his face colouring slightly as he places the book on the counter.

"I'll… um… take this."

I nod wordlessly, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. If he only knew how many times I'd seen that same face, that desire mixed with shame and innocent fear. So badly, I want to tell him it's not necessary, but I'm loathe to embarrass him further.

"That'll be two fifty," I say, not even bothering to ring up the sale. I'm not like those young folk you see at the variety store, who can't make change for a twenty. Besides, I haven't closed the cash drawer in days, and I'm not about to start now.

He digs in his pocket, change jangling but muffled, but doesn't produce a bill. He turns quickly, avoiding my amused expression, to say what I'm sure is a very familiar phrase:

"Um… Brian? Can I borrow five bucks?"

Armani man pinches his nose between his finger and thumb, and snorts. "What about the textbooks, Justin? Are you getting those, too?"

The blonde chuckles sheepishly. "Yeah. Those too." Brian holds them up in one hand, making Justin come retrieve them, but he follows down to the cash register. The two textbooks join the novel on the counter, and the older man adds several DVD's and a magazine.

An order this size, I do ring up, and when I announce the total, Brian wordlessly produces twenties from his expensive leather wallet. I bag up the books, pausing for a minute when I reach the novel.

"Books like these are culturally important," I say, tracing the edge of the cover. "They may seem trite and trashy these days, but they held the hopes of an entire generation of men. Writing these books was the only way they could acknowledge who they really were… It was as honest and forthright as they could manage to be. They dreamed of being able to walk together, freely. To show affection on the street. I hope you remember that when you get it home."

Brian rolls his eyes, waiting none too patiently as I set the book in the bag and make change for his purchase. Justin reaches to grab the bags, but Brian hesitates, and retrieves the novel once again.

"It really does look like you two," I offer as neutrally as possible.

"Yeah," he nods. He studies it for a moment more, then sets it back in the bag, slinging his arm over Justin's shoulders in a smooth, easy motion. "We're so pathetic."

The boy smiles that toothpaste-commercial grin, and they leave… together.


End file.
